Scenarios

right arrow

The Impromptu Project Manager

alison

Alison - eager to take on more responsibility at her first job.

Follow Alison, a recent college graduate that has taken great strides at her new job in her first six months. Now her boss thinks she is ready to take on more responsibility and wants her to serve as a jr. project manager. The only problem is that Alison has never had any real experience in project management. Discover how Project X helped Alison get the job done, communicate more effectively with her boss, and get one step closer to getting out of her cubicle and into an office

Goal:

To figure out how a novice project manager can successfully manage a huge project and impress the boss with little to no experience and no time to learn.

Challenge:

From the moment Alison started her very first job out of school, her goal was to learn as much as possible, take every opportunity by the horns, and climb the corporate ladder and so far so good. In just six months, Alison had managed to get the attention of the management team and was being given the opportunity to serve as a jr. project manager for one of the company's newest projects. Alison has great organizational skills and is determined to succeed, but she has minimal project management experience, she needs to get up to speed yesterday, and she needs to get everyone on board. In fact, the managers meeting is just a week away and she is first on the agenda.

Solution:

Project management can be an intimidating proposition for someone who is just starting out. Aside from needing to learn the software, the impromptu project manager needs to be able to get buy-in from all relevant resources, maintain the project updated, and impress the boss-a tall order even for the most experienced project managers. Alison soon found out that Project X was what she needed after all, Project X is project management software for the rest of us.

The first steps were easy enough enter the project tasks and the allocated resources. Project X's familiar and easy-to-use interface helped Alison get up to speed quickly and easily. Using the Network View she simply drag-and-dropped tasks onto the workspace and she was on her way. Plus, because Project X is fully integrated with other Mac OS X technologies including the Mac Address Book, iCal, Dashboard, Core Image, .Mac, Mail, Spotlight, and Personal Web Sharing, she was able to integrate the product into her existing workflow very easily.

Whenever in doubt, Alison took advantage of the unparalleled support offered to Project X users whether it was the online help, the free 90-day phone support or the video tutorials. In just a few hours the bulk of her project information entered and she was off to a great start.

To get project buy-in from the resources, Alison met with her mentor and obtained support to help institute a collaborative project management whereby each project team member updated the project in just minutes a day using Project X's innovative WebApp. This process, Alison explained, would reduce any data entry errors and would help each project team member be more accountable for their section of the project. A great pitch and a done deal!

Now, Alison was free to spend more of her time watching the projects progress and keeping executive management up-to-speed with what was happening. If something came up, Alison was able to quickly assign activities such as scheduling a meeting or a call to anyone on the project team. Most importantly, when she saw issues that needed to be escalated, she had a number of reports available to provide the necessary data so that her manager could make an informed decision and keep the project on track.

And what about that weekly meeting? Well, Alison found that Project X's Summary Report was exactly what she needed. The Summary Report quickly and easily provides a visual presentation of the status of the project. She had been asked to type up enough meeting minutes during those meetings in her six months there to know that scrolling through page after page of spreadsheets wasnt much help to the executives. Now that it was her turn, she was not going to be making that mistake. Executives want a quick snapshot of where things are and if they want the details, they will definitely ask. And if that time comes, shell have that information as well.

Armed with her Summary Report, Alison confidently walked into the weekly meeting as the first presenter and has kept her place on the agenda-now someone else takes the meeting minutes. OK, not everyone has the qualifications of a certified project manager - but with Project X, we can all make a difference and manage our own success in the process.

Key Project X Features:

right arrow left arrow